Projects and Collaborators

Collaborators
Postdocs
Kalle Mueller, March 2023 - 2025, two-year Feodor-Lynen fellowship, Université Côte d'Azur, topic: 'Abstract Objects in the Syntax of Natural Language'.
Doctoral Students
Furkan Dikmen 2023 - , project ANR-DFG on clausal complements, Université Côte d'Azur
Pierre Ardisson, 2024 - , topic: The mass-count distinction, Université Côte d'Azur
Mézin Alexis 2025 - , topic: Concepts and Underspecificity. Université Côte d'Azur.
Arash Behboodi, IHPST, Paris 1, PhD completion expected fall 2024
Dustin Goossen, University of Bochum (philosophy), co-director of PhD thesis, 2023 -
Barbora Wichterlova, University of Chicago, PhD committee member, 2020 -
Young researchers meetings
Weekly discussion of current work and literature. Here the list of papers discussed in 2024.
Visiting researchers
Keir Moulton, Professor at University of Toronto, March - April 2023, IDEX Université Côte d'Azur, research topic: 'Restrictions on Propositional Anaphora'.
Former postdoc
Clementine Raffy, postdoc Idex Université Côte d'Azur, 2022-2024.
New Projects
[1] CSI 2023 Volet Recherche, Université Côte d'Azur: 'The Notion of an Artifact in Semantics and in Philosophy' (ARTEFACT)
[2] DFG-ANR Project (Université Côte d'Azur / Tours - Tuebingen / Stuttgart): 'Hosting a Clause: Implications for the Matrix and its Guests', 2023-2027, financing of four three-year doctoral positions.
Permanent project
Natural Language Ontology: A Developing Discipline
Natural Language Ontology is a new discipline that integrates metaphysics and natural language semantics and syntax. The aim of this project is to develop the foundations and methodology of natural language ontology, to set out new aims and perpectives of research within it, and to relate it to contemporary and historical pursuits in metaphysics as well as in in generative linguistics.
I consider this field of research extremely promising and exciting, given the developments in both empirical and theoretical linguistics (including syntax!) and contemporary as well as historical perspectives in metaphysics. I also consider the fondational work crucial for setting out specific research perspectives that can yielding important result, such as the distinction between core and periphery of language.
Here are my own publications focusing on natural language ontology and its foundations as such, or having a significant part that does so:
- 'Natural Language Ontology'. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford UP, New York, March 2017, online.
- 'Natural Language and its Ontology'. In A. Goldman and B. McLaughlin (eds): Metaphysics and Cognitive Science, Oxford UP, Oxford, 2019, 206-232
- 'Natural Language Ontology'. In R. Bliss and J. Miller (eds.): Routledge Handbook of Metametaphyics, 2020.
- 'Natural Language Ontology'. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Zalta, 2022
- 'Abstract Objects and the Core-Periphery Distinction in the Ontological and Conceptual Domain of Natural Language'. In Falguera, J. L. / C. Martínez (eds.): Abstract Objects. For and Against. Synthese Library, Springer, Dordrecht, 2020, 255-276.
- 'Levels of Ontology and Natural Language: The Case of the Ontology of Parts and Wholes'. In J. Miller (ed.): The Language of Ontology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021.
A lot of my work falls within natural language metaphysics, in particular my books Parts and Wholes in Semantics, Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language, Objects and Attitudes. Natural language ontology is both a developing field and a practice that had been pursued throughout the history of philosophy.
A lot of my teaching is on new developments in natural language ontology, such as my 42hrs course 'Language and Ontology' at the University of Padua in the spring 2016, my course in Dusseldorf in the summer of 2018, my ESSLLI 2024 and 2025 courses, and my hybrid, yearly courses in philosophy of language at the Université Côte d'Azur..